


en prise // so goes the haze

by Zietegeest



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Drugs, Drunk Sex, F/F, Intoxication, Missing Scene, Substance Abuse, benzodiazepines, crossfaded, crossfading, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27476875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zietegeest/pseuds/Zietegeest
Summary: missing scene in Adjournment - Beth meeting Cleo at the bar/waking up in the bathtub
Relationships: Cleo/Beth Harmon
Comments: 11
Kudos: 62





	en prise // so goes the haze

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING this contains very very intoxicated sex havings.  
> WARNING mixing benzos and alcohol is incredibly dangerous, I don't condone it, don't condone mixing drugs in general 
> 
> **this is what sets Beth's hardcore spiral into motion and it's very spacey/internal

The grandeur of the hotel shines bright at the corners of Beth's eyes as she crosses through the halls and down the staircase to the bar. The plants and tiled mirrors that line the path create holes in the walls, illusions of secret windows into nature, and as she enters the barroom she feels as though she's wandered into a dream, missed the moment that waking had abandoned her. 

The discipline of her plan to study and her early night abandon Beth too the moment she sees her.

Beth doesn't call out, pinning her tongue between her teeth as she enters the room, wanting to savour for a moment the look of the woman seated alone at the bar. Before Beth truly approaches she takes in the line of Cleo in her seat, the charcoal smear of her hair over the soft cream of her shirt, the lines of her arms blank, her back turned to Beth.

The hotel is basked in dramatic elegance, the tiles that led Beth here gold-flecked and shining beneath crystal chandeliers, each piece of art a statement that Beth feels lost amid, caught in the glamour. And now, the sight of Cleo at the bar is more of that elegance, filling into the scene like she was painted there, sharp and liquid all at once, refracting the light and Beth's gaze with it. 

She goes to her, they greet and Beth feels herself falling into the shadow of Cleo's grace. It's a fast descent, it hits just as it had the first time, and Beth doesn't try to hide her staring. The coal black glossy makeup around Cleo's eyes makes them appear larger, catlike in the corners and Beth drinks it in, dark and dramatic. She wonders as they talk, falling into a natural rhythm, how long it's been since she's blinked, or taken a breath. The night, the room, feels molded around Cleo like a wax pastel poised above a blank sheet of paper, ready to lift the image to life. 

When the server sets down a second pitcher it touches against the bar top with a soft _clack._ It's a sound that echoes through Beth's mind like something had hit the floor and broken, the sound continuing to break through her head, and she wonders briefly if what's broken was her own willpower. 

She realizes as she watches the lines of Cleo's fingers grasp the pitcher, tip it towards her own glass that the broken thing is too destroyed to really recognize. A million pieces of who she is - it glimmers as Cleo's hand extends to her glass now, and she sees as if from far away her own hands offering her empty cup to the mouth of it. 

Beth's eyes fall briefly to the floor to see it. A shattered mosaic of the past, the tiled mirrors that are windows in her mind, showing her the now blurring faces that have surrounded her. But those are clearing now, painted over as the clouds roll in and the shape of something new takes form behind her eyes. She can't quite make it out - this new and blending shape. It holds a promise in its hands, pale and extending like it's beckoning her further out and she follows like a ship called in by a lighthouse. 

She can feel the rest of it fading, those sharp glass edges softening, wearing down. She wonders - just as blurry, just as pale - who she is out here, who she could be.

And she brings the cup to her lips, tilts it back like she might find the answer buried at the bottom of the glass, a shimmer in the silt. 

It's easy to forget despite the background hum of the other patrons, that there's anyone in the world besides Cleo. Beth's eyes are locked onto the trailing shape of her expression, and when Cleo speaks - _one of those possibilities is staring at you right now_ \- Beth had thought - had hoped, had dared to hope - that Cleo was referring to herself. Something caves in in Beth's chest when she realizes she hadn't. It sinks like disappointment, built up by the unplanned nature of the night.

Built up by the way Cleo had phoned her - had asked for her, her presence, and Beth greedily had wanted it to mean her only. 

_Let's see how many lies they tell,_ and Beth hears Cleo's voice the way she had sounded on the phone, smoky and metallic through the line. 

❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂

The man at her side is speaking to her, but she doesn't let the words in. He's speaking them to the edge of her - the curve of her shoulder, and she hears the other man at Cleo's side filling in the blank space of silence that Beth is leaving. She can hear Ms. Diedorf's voice nipping at her ear then, scolding this lack of etiquette. And again Beth raises a glass and that voice blurs too, absorbed into the tiles, the mirrors, felled and vanished. 

She thinks it must be hard for them - the names already forgotten, no, not learned at all - to sit here and try to entertain them. Cleo, because she's sought them out with her expectations of them already on the floor. And her, her because she's never been entertained enough. The them's she's met before, and how it's not fair on top of that because she's already grouped them in with all of those. Those faces with no names. Not bothering to give them a chance, because what's the point? Her in this bar, mouth warm with the taste of Pastis, gone again in another day. And maybe sometimes a man will come along and surprise her, but then what? Then her mouth will still taste like liquorice an she'll still have a game in the morning, a flight after that. 

She's thinking next in a run-on and convoluted sort of way how hard it is to run from things, how easy it is instead to run towards destruction. How difficult to try and entertain a stranger-woman in a fancy bar, how easy it is to catch a flight, to not answer the phone. To make up an excuse and disappear into the night. How hard it was to say no to Cleo, how easy it's going to be to say no to these men, and all the ones they're reminding her so much of. There's a few that stand out. Harry, she thinks softly. Benny, not as soft. She's reaching for her glass again. It's empty. One of the men offers her another. She thinks that Ms. Diedorf would have something to say to him too. But what Beth says is _thank you, Harry._

"It's Henri," he corrects, and Beth apologizes with her lips to the edge of the glass he's handed her. 

"Don't you need to sleep early?" Cleo's voice, the soft purr of it through the room, stepping through so much gold. 

"I do," Beth says, but feels the trouble with it as soon as she's said it. Her own tone, the remorse of it, the way sleep feels like an impediment. Cumbersome, and the threat of it rubs at Beth's skin. She can feel the blisters forming, the bitterness. The ache in her mind at climbing those shining stairs, retiring alone. 

"Well it's early still," one of the men is saying, the one at Beth's side, and she can't put a name to the unfamiliarity of his voice. 

"It's not to me. I'm still on New York time," she says, finishing her drink and feeling some of those other names fade out. She swallows nothing next, putting more distance between it, more clouds in the window of her mind, and looks up to see the other man looking at her with a forlorn expression that she wants to look away from. 

She knows this look, she's seen it written across too many men's faces - _don't leave me_ and when she turns away from his eyes she meets Cleo's. Cleo is wearing the same expression, but this time it pulls Beth in towards it. _Don't leave me,_ and Beth wants to wrap her fingers around it, tangle with the sharpness of it, pray into her skin that she won't, she wouldn't. Beth goes to stand and those reflecting walls, the tiled mirrors hold her eyes, take them and warp them until Beth's the one saying it, has always been the one saying it, but now a version of herself is staring back, saying it back, and she thinks she may need to sit back down. 

But then Cleo is standing too and she hasn't been caught in the mirrors. She catches Beth's arm instead, winds it close. 

"Why don't we take a bottle back to my room?" Beth says, and the shape of Cleo's body beside her is warm, holds a firmness that Beth's mind has lost, and she pulls closer to it now. "Then I can sleep but we don't have to say goodbye."

Then the men are lost, washed away as she lets Cleo guide her from the room. They pause at the bar and Beth doesn't notice what Cleo orders, just hears the fluent arch of her tongue, and it comes in a black bottle outlined with gold to match the shapes in the floor that follow them back upstairs.

"So much for telling lies," Beth says, a curling huff against Cleo's shoulder.

"At least lies would have been interesting," Cleo is saying, and Beth doesn't respond, is taking the stairs one at a time and losing count of them. "I was worried I would have to spend another sad night in Paris by myself."

Her eyes are dark with some sorrowful tease, and Beth wants to laugh again - can already taste it bubbling its way up her throat - but there's a part of Cleo that the joke doesn't work with. A melancholic smudge like the back of a hand dragged through wet ink, and Beth can see herself in the blotted shadow of it. 

"Don't be sad," Beth says, and reaches with the hand that's not slick against the railing to grab onto Cleo's.

"Not tonight," Cleo says back. She's laced their fingers while Beth was speaking.

❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂

Beth's thoughts let Cleo into her room, twisting like her key inside the lock. She thinks that maybe it's the elevation that's made her head feel so strangely light and heavy all at once. The empty room looks out at them - drinking in the shape of Cleo, Beth thinks. Beth wants to introduce her to the walls. Wants to feel her spread beneath her hands, close enough to touch and so she does. Runs her hands down Cleo's sides, and Cleo spins. She's smiling, and Beth is too, wants more of it. Wants to tear out the itch inside her head that seems to always be needing more, always saying _this isn't enough._ Her pills are there, balanced on top of her nightstand, watching them too. Waiting for an introduction, and Beth feels she's been rude enough tonight, and couldn't possibly turn them down as well.

The problem with the pills - one of many, but the only one that Beth can see in this lighting - is what they're guarded by. A sentinel ghost that wraps around her as she lifts the cylinder into her hand. It's a ghost that's shaped like Harry Beltik and his words come next, writhing out and through her head. Paul Morphy too. They're whispering together now, softly jaded words of pride and sorrow, and she tries to bite through the sting of it as she places a pill on her tongue. She tries to swallow but something is sticking in her throat. The insisting from the ghosts is getting louder as she breathes around the shape of it, louder and louder until it's reaching a peak and she's flinching at the loud _pop_ that shouts against the walls as Cleo rids the bottle of its cork. 

Cleo drinks from it as Beth banishes the voices of ghosts from around her skullcap. The vapour from the lid is trailing in a reptilian wisp across Cleo's face, and Beth's eyes move like scales over her lips, the shape of liquid down the neck of the bottle. Cleo swallows cooly, turns, and now she's holding the bottle out to Beth. Beth sees it - her fingers at the throat of the glass, the glisten on her mouth. Hears the sound of barroom chatter pleading _please don't leave,_ synchronized with Harry's voice above the din _it's always been you,_ the wet stain of headlights in the rain, the wet stain on basement walls. 

A shiver and she's back inside the room, her mouth still dry. Cleo's fingers still holding the bottle and it's not a bottle now but an offer to escape from these thoughts, to drown out the bitter taste of jagged pieces from the past, and Beth accepts it, spills it down her throat and washes it all away. 

Beth's vision falls like curtains to the floor, up the walls and down again, moving like the sun through dirty windows, bleary and cascading. Her head feels bleary too and just as bright, and even as her senses fall out with her thoughts she can still hear the alternate route of the night, deafeningly loud. The pounding, raging silence of how her room would have stood had she not snuck downstairs, the noise of her breathing on her own. This alternate route, this cave of solitude she had built around herself is a path ripped out like a weed from the roots, filled now with the shape of Cleo, the taste of lipstick and liquorice, and Beth laughs, laughs and banishes the scatter of her eyes up to the ceiling where it hangs, spins, creating shapes that smear across her eyelashes. 

Then the silence is fading, turning into the metallic echo of Cleo's voice against her ear, tunnelling through the telephone line and whispering _sweet dreams,_ the crushing end of that timeline that Beth has disregarded, but now, underneath the rotating canter of her eyes across the painted ceiling, she thinks that maybe this is it after all. A dream, sweet like liquor and bated breath, a dream that she could lose herself in entirely. 

Cleo - the Cleo that's here now, not the soft and jilted one across the line - is whispering to her again. Dancing too, as Beth's eyes are pulled into the shape of her. Dancing, or else Beth's eyes are dancing around her, peeling the walls up from the edges and tangling them into one sheet, one long and running mural that sweeps them both up and fades out into the night. 

Beth wants to dance with her before she's blended into the mural. She moves towards the music, the shape of Cleo's body, but before she reaches it she can feel something else descend over her. The separation - it snows over the lines of her mind, blending the edges of her skull and softening them, receding the walls and pushing everything between them further and further out. 

The disconnect spreads like fungal spores, and Beth thinks in that same thick and fogging vein that the spots of light smearing through her vision are like spores too. Floating through the unsteady line of her eyes, captured by the floors and golden decals throughout the room. These spores of disconnect land on and devour the furniture, eroding the cloth like moths in a closet, tiny holes becoming larger until there's nothing left but holes. And these holes left in the room in turn devour the walls, the wiring behind the walls, the pipes, the foundations of the building.

 _It's not fair,_ Beth thinks. The walls were blameless in the disconnect. Somehow the ceiling stays intact, keeping a tight lid on the night, steeling Beth's balance even as her mind teeters. Further and further out. The moths are trying to fly now, but have grown too fat from their gorging, and Beth can feel that same weighted strain in her own stomach. She's going to be sick, and she recognizes this the same way she could recognize trees passing from a train window. A distant thought, green and blurring, slick like oil.

Beth breaks for the bathroom, coming hard to her knees in front of the toilet bowl. The air is cooler down here, and as she breathes it in she listens to the curious pounding of her heart in her ears. She doesn't throw up - just kneels and breathes and feels the concept of time start to melt above her, and drip down her scalp. 

"Are you alright?" Cleo's voice comes in, parts the clouds. Cleo's hand comes too, dipping in to press at the back of Beth's neck, tucking her hair back, and as quickly as the strange and melting feeling had come on it's vanishing again.

"Just got dizzy for a moment there," Beth says. Her voice sounds far away from her body, but the cool press of Cleo's hand is so present.

"Because you were spinning, of course," Cleo chides, and Beth tucks her head against the closed lid, porcelain straining her skin. 

"Was I?" She takes another breath, cool to match the feeling of the hand against her head, but it's quickly warming. "I don't feel right," Beth says next. The words leave her with a soft laugh and Cleo pulls her head away from the lid, rests it against her chest.

"Of course not," Cleo says, and Beth is lost to the tide of Cleo's breathing. A gentle swell with each inhale, then the coasting descent. "I'll draw you a bath," Cleo is saying through the soft waves. Beth lets her mind trail into the disconnect as Cleo runs the taps. Beth finds herself standing now, leaning back into the cabinets the sink it built into. Cleo is humming, velvet notes that Beth doesn't recognize, though she wants to, wishes she could embrace the tune and sing along.

The tub fills quickly and the bronze clawed feet seem to sink into the floor, anchored in place. Faint lines of steam trace past Beth's eyes, and there's a sparkle to the water that evokes a deep craving from inside her bones. 

"Soak," Cleo says, skimming the top of the water with the flat of her hand. "And come find me when you're done," she adds, and this is enough to tear a jagged hole though the fog that Beth is living in. She doesn't want her to go - not into that other room that isn't a room anymore. It's just a black hole with a ceiling stamped on top, the walls all chewed though, no light, no company. She can see in her mind's eye then - Cleo leaving this small cove, wandering out into the black hole, vanishing too. It's a terrible thought, some pit inside of Beth knows this feeling well but can't reason with it, and can't accept it. Another loss to the abyss, and so Beth reaches out for her, catches the thin belt around her waist, and her fingers tangle in the gold the way the light has tangled in her eyes. 

Across from her, in Cleo's eyes, Beth can see an infinite well that she'd rather get lost in. A hidden depth that Cleo kept denying, but Beth can see it - easily now that it's the only thing left alive, uneaten by the darkness. 

"Share with me," Beth says, and a smile falls onto Cleo's face.

"Surely we both drown," Cleo answers, but as she says it she's bringing her hands to meet Beth's at her waist, unhooking her belt and dropping it to the ground. 

Cleo is running down the zip on her pants next, then peeling off her shirt but Beth doesn't move to undress. Her head feels distant, body merging with her dress and the air around them. And as her hands chime in to touch at Cleo's waist she can hardly recognize the difference between their skin. She tries to test it, closes her eyes and slides her palms around to Cleo's back. Warm skin spreading like sand between her fingers, and Cleo steps forward. She's saying something, asking Beth a question, and it's a struggle, like wading back against the tide for Beth to make out her words. She does find them though, the ship to the lighthouse. 

"Aren't you taking this off?" Fingers that aren't hers playing at the zipper at the base of Beth's neck. She shakes her head; it feels heavy. She already feels naked - feels clear like open air, and the water keeps on calling. Beth wants to feel it soaking in to the fabric. Wants to feel the seams start to weigh down, wants to feel it like a second skin touching her, a layer between her and Cleo so she can be certain that such a barrier exists. Because Cleo is standing in front of her now, Beth's back to the ceramic sink, and every breath Cleo is taking is sinking wine-stained into her, and she can't find her own ending, Cleo's beginning, isn't sure there is one anymore.

There's only one option, only one move to make and it doesn't feel to Beth like a choice at all. The command comes from her mind, a swift insisting - _take the queen,_ and she does. Moves into the water, and catches Cleo in a soft kiss.

She finds it then - that thin line of where they separate. It lives, breathes at the edge of her tongue and the gentle parting of Cleo's lips. It's gone then - no voices in her head, no past, no shattered and imagined glass on the floor. Only the warm breath against her cheek as they draw apart, the warm press of her lips as they reconnect. The warmth of the water, the warm chasm of Beth's stomach, the buzz at her fingertips. 

None of it feels as warm as Cleo's body against hers, reaching through the fabric of her dress, pulling gently towards her own skin underneath. Beth's hands are swimming along the lines of Cleo's body, tracing like rivers along the soft ridges of her spine, her hips, the rise and fall of her ribcage as she breathes. 

Beth wants to follow the warmth like it's a hidden trail, something luring her deeper with the crook of a finger. The wine, the haze of her mind, the taste of liquorice all chipping away at Beth and she finds she doesn't have the strength to try and fight the urge. So she chases it down. Chases the warmth with her own fingers, moving them between her body and Cleo's - and she's still not certain they're separate, still not convinced they're not joined somehow, not when they both feel the same. She finds the warmth here, pulsing out a soft harmony that she can feel with her own veins, and her fingers toy with the satin hem. Cleo makes a sound, satiny too, and it hums into the skin at Beth's neck, drawing her closer. 

Her own voice then, false and echoing in her head saying _I'm still on New York time,_ and when had that been? She can feel the weightlessness of vacant clocks inside her, the meaninglessness of it. The notion of time, of second and minute hands, of hands at all that weren't the ones gently wrapped around her body now. New York time, and what was in New York? She can't find a face to put to it now, can't find her way through this haze that isn't the feeling of warm skin, of water. 

Cleo's body is rocking gently against her now, a perfect twin of that water that's lapping again the side of the bathtub, the rhythm to the haze inside her mind. The haze isn't made of clouds now but a swarm of birds instead, dancing and dipping through the air inside her skull, the vast skies there. 

And like twins, like birds flocking, wings in time with each other, when Cleo's breath hitches and her body tightens around the patterned motion of Beth's fingers, Beth's fan out to match. The shadow of an orgasm that ripples through her fades as softly as it rose, and she doesn't chase it, not when Cleo's skin is so warm against her cheek, her fingers tangled in her hair. 

Beth couldn't say how long they stay like that, entwined in the water, breathing in tandem, partially clothed but fully bare. Beth thinks - feels it inbetween her ribs - that the concept of time would be too daunted to put a name to this. Banished by the waves. She imagines that eternity is passing. That nothing is passing. That they're held immobile, flying fast, migrating somewhere warmer. 

❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂

_"Shall we go to bed?"_ The voice breaks through the vision. Beth feels the vibration of it, the words stitched like braille into her skin rather than she hears Cleo's voice at all. She does hear it, on some level at least, and Beth opens her eyes.

There's a moment where Beth can't quite recall where they are. The light in the room has fractured in her eyes, pulled into the water to drown and Beth wants to sink back down with it. But then, Cleo's hand on her neck, her voice at her side, and Beth isn't so sure she wants to drown anymore.

"I want to stay here for a while," she says. To Cleo, to herself. The hand at her neck sweeps to one side, parting the damp trail of hair into the dip of Beth's shoulder. 

"Alright, sirène," Cleo says. "Bonne nuit." She's leaving the tub now, leaving the water with Beth's body, taking some of that warmth with her as she does. 

Soon she'll be leaving the room, retreating back into that black hole of a hotel bedroom. Beth tries to picture it, finds she can't. That other room - the rest of the world outside of the water - can barely materialize in Beth's mind. The black hole of the next room over is a dead thing now, collapsed in on itself. Beth thinks of decay, of loss, of an empty chasm demanding a sacrifice. Something to be poured into, and then those thoughts and feelings collapse too. There's only skin and water, the soft ghost of Cleo's lips on hers. 

She can see through those fractured lines of light Cleo stripping down, patting dry, damp heels leaving cloven prints on the tiles as she leaves the room. It's too bright - too much space demanding without her now, and Beth rises up from the water to call after her. 

"Will you turn off the light?" She asks, and she can hear the smile on Cleo as she does. Then Beth shuts her eyes again, sinking back into the water. _I'll just stay for another minute,_ she thinks. Darkness envelops her, silence and the low stretch of water, the heavy cling of the fabric down her body.

She thinks she hears it once again, pressed against the shell of her ear. That metallic voice, elusive as smoke, saying _sweet dreams._


End file.
